The painter Francis Bacon said this best, I think, when he would describe the impetus for his own work as a desire to impress himself on the “nervous system” of the viewer, or to give that viewer a “visual shock.” For shock is similar to surprise, and we are surprised by the unexpected. And, once we reach adulthood, the unexpected is as near as we can get to that which is new.
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Which, ok, yes…there is nothing new under the sun. And yet, the only rationale an artist can find, I think, to justify his or her occupation, is to create something that can be described as “new.” Which is why originality, at least in the arts, is not measured so much by content or subject, or that which is depicted (for Ecclesiastes is right, there is nothing new in that sense) but rather by its formal innovation. Its architecture. Its style.
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Which reminds me of Ecclesiastes, the first chapter of which begins like this:
“A shadow’s shadow, he tells us, a shadow’s shadow; a world of shadows! How is man the better for all this toiling of his, here under the sun? Age succeeds age, and the world goes on unaltered. Sun may rise and sun may set, but ever it goes back and is reborn. Round to the south it moves, round to the north it turns; the wind, too, though it makes the round of the world, goes back to the beginning of its round at last. All the rivers flow into the sea, yet never the sea grows full; back to their springs they find their way, and must be flowing still. Weariness, all weariness; who shall tell the tale? Eye looks on unsatisfied; ear listens, ill content. Ever that shall be that ever has been, that which has happened once shall happen again; there can be nothing new, here under the sun. Never man calls a thing new, but it is something already known to the ages that went before us; only we have no record of older days. So, believe me, the fame of tomorrow’s doings will be forgotten by the men of a later time.”
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There is, I think, in every artist, a listlessness that is born of the recognition which most people have, at some point in their lives, that human enterprise in any form, and perhaps even civilization itself, is, while not without purpose, more ephemeral than our habits and our enthusiasms and our hostilities would suggest we understand it to be. And while this recognition is not without value (for it has in it some quality of wisdom) it could, if not for the strength of some compulsion or effort that competes with it, inside the artist, and that is not entirely explicable, lead that artist to produce nothing, or to suddenly quit producing, after a period of activity.
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By ‘prodigy’ I mean someone whose talent develops early, almost too early to be believed. I don’t necessarily mean someone whose output is prodigious, though that might also be the case.
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In other words, the fact that he was a prodigy might be beside the point.
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Although, maybe the “other work” I refer to, in connection with myself, Rimbaud also had, but turned away from the possibility of completing, because he was tired of it, or because he merely decided he’d had enough, and that he didn’t feel like doing it anymore.
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I sound like an academic, but I’m not one. I would be like Rimbaud, and leave my desk to traipse the world, and find employment in one job or another, in this town or that, but I’m not a prodigy as he was, and thus I still have other work to do.
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Which is not to say that form itself is something I wish to be free of, for, without form, a work of art will have no coherence, no order, and thus will not be art. And, if I’m not attempting to make a work of art here, then what is it that I’m doing?
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I digress. Though I know that if I keep talking, I’ll eventually return to where I was, because the mind has its preoccupations, the nature of which is to seek expression. And, anyway, as I’ve already mentioned, this diary is one long digression, which is perhaps a sign of my indiscipline, though it could also be understood as an attempt to loosen myself from the impositions of form.
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“Be vigilant,” it is written, in the First Epistle of Peter, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
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Which, of course, is precisely what diabolic activity is about, even in its ordinary manifestations. It sows discord. It preys upon our vulnerabilities, weakens our fortitude, rids us of joy, so that any spiritual momentum we might have had is slowed, and any orientation we might have had, toward God, becomes easy to shift. And then, once it is done with us, done using us like the tools that we become for it, when we give in to it, it goes somewhere else, concentrates its power on someone else for a while. But it is always near at hand, to come back to us. Wishing to bring us nearer to its realm.
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That the “us” that Merrin is referring to is not the possessed person herself, but rather those who love her, and who are forced to witness the condition into which she has been plunged, is evidence of the Devil’s cunning, as well as his appetite for all our spiritual deaths.
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What is the purpose of possession then? From the diabolic perspective? Father Karras, in The Exorcist, asks this same question, to which Father Merrin responds slowly, as if he is uncertain, or has become certain only after pondering the question himself a long time: “I think the point is to make us despair…To see ourselves as…animal and ugly…To reject the possibility that God could love us.”
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I once said something, with regard to this subject, in an interview I did several years ago, that I see now might have been confusing, and that I would like to clarify here, even if no one reads it, for at least then I will have tried to amend what I consider no small error. In that interview, while attempting to draw a distinction between demonic possession and mental illness, I described the former as a situation where “maleficent spiritual beings take possession of one’s body, in order that they might have one’s soul for eternity.” While the beginning of that sentence is true, the final clause is not necessarily true. For to be possessed by a demon, through no fault of one’s own (or, anyway, without any collusion that could be described as intentional, or premeditated) is to have no culpability, and to be blameless in the eyes of God. In other words, the diabolic powers do not always have jurisdiction over such a soul, even if the person dies while in the throes of possession. It might even be better to say that those powers rarely, if ever, have that jurisdiction.
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If you have seen the movie The Exorcist, you might remember the words of advice that Father Merrin speaks to Father Karras, while they are putting on their vestments and readying their things, before they enter the bedroom of the little girl, Regan, who has been possessed by a demon and who the two priests intend to help, by way of an exorcism. “He’s a liar,” Father Merrin says. “The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth. To attack us. The attack is psychological. And powerful. So don’t listen. Remember that. Do not listen.”
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They were still in Paradise then, for God had not yet exiled them, so reality would’ve been a heightened or glorified version of that which we inhabit now. What is really meant by ‘offense,’ in this situation, is shame, or embarrassment, which can exist only where there is self-consciousness. And that, I think, is what Satan was indicating when, in the shape of a serpent, he told Eve that “the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” It is a lie, yes. But it is the most cunning sort of lie, which takes what is true and misrepresents it.
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I say Americans, because the quote mentioned Americans, and I would like to remain specific to the quote, but the implications need not be limited to them, if the conversation were to be generalized. Americans are not unique, I don’t think, in their tendency to hide from reality, or to hide reality from their eyes. It is a problem that belongs to modernity. And, really, not only to modernity, but even to humankind, wherever and whenever humankind detaches itself from God, or forgets its place in the supernatural order. Remember that the first thing Adam and Eve did, after they’d eaten of the apple, was to clothe themselves in fig leaves, as if reality in all its nakedness could be an offense to their eyes.
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In any case, my point is this: there is a relationship between reality and truth. And it is this relationship, I think, that Baldwin would like us to be aware of, when he tells us that many Americans try to “avoid reality.”
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So, to be more accurate, I suppose I should say that, where I have used the word “creation,” I have been referring to reality in more than its phenomenological sense.